A Mexican anthropologist and graduate of New Mexico State University will visit NMSU this week to speak about teens and the drug-related violence in Mexico.
Jorge Carrera Robles of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (the National Institute of Anthropology and History) in Chihuahua, Mexico, will give a lecture titled, “Community Intervention Model to Counteract Social Fear in Adolescents,” at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 21, at Nason House, 1070 University Ave. The bilingual lecture is free and open to the public, and is hosted by the NMSU College of Arts and Sciences English Department and the Center for Latin American and Border Studies.
Carrera Robles’ lecture will focus on the extreme violence that took place in Juarez and the state of Chihuahua in Mexico between 2008 and 2011, and how that violence affected thousands of teenagers and their families. Communities were left fractured because of the violence, which also generated hopelessness among residents.
“Jorge Carrera Robles, an NMSU alumnus, asks how teenagers in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua confronted the recent cycle of violence in Mexico,” said Iñigo García-Bryce, director of the NMSU Center for Latin American and Border Studies. “His research in some of the poorest neighborhoods of these cities shows how teenagers overcame violence-related fear by forging meaningful connections to their communities.”
García-Bryce said the lecture will be given in Spanish, with simultaneous translation into English.
“Not many lectures are offered in Spanish at NMSU and this is also an opportunity to serve a Spanish speaking audience,” García-Bryce said.
Carrera Robles conducted research on a community intervention model to counteract social fear among teenagers in the poorest colonias. Using culture and the arts, the civic association Umbral has had a significant impact on the lives of teenagers and their families in 20 colonias in the cities of Juarez and Chihuahua. The program emphasizes the transformative role of civil society rather than of the government, and seeks to foster a strong sense of citizenship within the community as well as intergenerational connections.
Information from NMSU